Reading remains a cornerstone of cultural and intellectual life worldwide, but engagement varies significantly by nation.

Measuring “which countries read the most” can focus on metrics like average books consumed annually per capita, weekly reading hours, or library usage rates. Drawing from recent data by World Population Review, Americans are (somewhat surprisingly) the world’s most voracious readers.

Americans spend almost 7 hours reading per week, on average. This equals 357 hours per year.

Source: Voronoiapp.com

In contrast, India, ranking second (only about 5 minutes per week behind that of Americans) reads the most in sheer numbers—over 90 million books sold yearly—but per capita lags at 1.5 due to population scale.

China mirrors this, with 500 million readers, though urban youth drive digital consumption.

The United Kingdom comes in third, reading about 6.5 hours a week or 343 hours per year, followed by France with the average person reading for about 5 hours and 50 minutes each week.

Italians are the fifth most voracious readers globally, reading for 5 hours and 20 minutes per week or 278 hours per year.

These trends highlight policy’s role: subsidies, accessibility, and cultural promotion elevate reading.

As digital formats rise, expect Asia’s per capita figures to climb, narrowing the gap with Europe.

Globally, reading correlates with higher empathy and innovation – lessons for under-engaged nations like Afghanistan, Brunei, and Pakistan.

Submitted by Thomas Kolbe

The collapse of German industrial production is dragging municipal finances down with it. The state-funded economic institute DIW claims salvation lies in the artificial Green Tech sector.

It is becoming increasingly difficult to shock readers with new economic numbers, given Germany’s ongoing economic decline. Yet a 19% plunge in machinery orders in September—reported by the VDMA—manages exactly that. A shock even by German standards. 

The association offered an explanation right away: last year’s large-scale plant orders are simply missing this September. But that doesn’t change the diagnosis.

Johannes Gernandt, chief economist of the VDMA, expects another 5% drop in production this year. That means German mechanical engineering has lost more than 15% of its output since its 2018 peak—an unprecedented decline of one of the country’s key industries, barely reflected in media coverage. Overall industrial production is down almost 20%.

Silence Instead of Debate

Public debate about the real state of the German economy suffers from a lack of honest assessments—from within the economy itself. Only Christian Kullmann, CEO of chemical giant Evonik, dared to place his finger on the wound, denouncing the crisis as a direct result of Brussels-style climate policy.

One looks at this collapse and rubs one’s eyes in disbelief. Where are the sharp, unvarnished words about politics, conditions, exploding energy costs and the chokehold of bureaucracy? 

Has politics really succeeded in binding large parts of corporate leadership so deeply into the subsidy machinery that criticism has become impossible?

How many business models would collapse if Brussels and Berlin pulled the plug on subsidies overnight?

It’s hard to avoid a grim conclusion: state intervention has turned major parts of the economy into dependent command structures, fed by the subsidy printer. This has distorted public discourse—removing its critical edge and pulling its teeth.

Voice from the Shadows

Now another heavyweight speaks up: former VW CEO Matthias Müller. No longer in office, but still a voice from the top tier of German industry. And Müller finds clear—almost desperate—words in light of the looming industrial collapse. He warns of a “job massacre” in the auto industry.

Rightly so. Müller sees not only carmakers at risk, but the entire value chain. He blames “Eurocrats” for banning combustion engines and blocking a soft transition to e-mobility.

Reality proves him right: at Bosch and ZF Friedrichshafen, tens of thousands of jobs are already disappearing. Müller condemns an ideology-driven policy that sends energy prices into absurd territory and suffocates industry with bureaucratic madness. He speaks of a “lost decade”—and he isn’t wrong.

But this is exactly where debate dies: observations, warnings, appeals—lonely voices in a dead desert. A real discourse on the true state of the German economy? Nowhere. 

Meanwhile, like a monument to delusion, stands the growth forecast of Economy Minister Katharina Reiche (CDU). Her ministry seriously expects 0.2% growth this year—and 1.3% by 2026.

Given mass layoffs, collapsing demand, and shrinking production—who has the nerve to send their minister out with such fantasy numbers?

Propaganda Units Activated

When criticism of Berlin or Brussels economic policy threatens to gain traction, institutes like DIW are ready to neutralize it. Its president, Marcel Fratzscher—known for bizarre media ideas like mandatory labor service for retirees—regularly delivers ideological cover fire.

Serious economists are rare at DIW. When criticism touches the artificial “eco-economy,” Claudia Kemfert steps onto the stage—DIW’s “climate economist” and staunch defender of green state capitalism. In a column for Focus, she downplayed Germany’s industrial crisis, portraying it as a transition toward a green industrial future already generating 9% of GDP.

Her view of Greentech—subsidy-fed industries living off taxpayers, state programs, and cheap ECB money—presents the illusion of a new economic model smoothly replacing old structures.

Subsidized heat pumps, recycling schemes, fragile storage technologies for an unstable power grid—this, we’re told, will replace automotive, machinery, and electrical engineering. 

An extraordinary worldview—one that ignores global markets, real demand, energy costs, and the failure of central planning.

What Kemfert and Fratzscher sell is pure voodoo economics—a pseudo-scientific backdrop to safeguard eco-socialist policy.

Municipal Collapse

The consequences of central economic planning—broken supply chains, permanent recession, rising unemployment—are never addressed. But reality has hit the foundations of the state—local treasurers. The collapse is now destroying municipal finances: business tax revenues are crumbling.

In a letter to the Chancellor, 13 mayors of state capitals demanded emergency aid to prevent fiscal collapse.

It remains to be seen whether fresh debt from special funds will be used once again to plaster over symptoms—or whether the wall of silence finally breaks and the root of the crisis is named: the Green Deal.

A green transformation—wrapped in warm words and environmental rhetoric—that is sawing away at the economic foundations of this country.

Green comfort propaganda and subsidy placebos will not be enough to calm the rising army of the unemployed.

* * *

About the author: Thomas Kolbe, born in 1978 in Neuss/ Germany, is a graduate economist. For over 25 years, he has worked as a journalist and media producer for clients from various industries and business associations. As a publicist, he focuses on economic processes and observes geopolitical events from the perspective of the capital markets. His publications follow a philosophy that focuses on the individual and their right to self-determination.

It was uphill fun pretty much constantly since April, but then in the past two weeks, the market has clearly gotten harder, and as Goldman TMT specialist Peter Bartlett writes in a note (available to pro subs), is set to post its second -2% session in 3 days, with under-the-hood price action feeling increasingly unsettling.

Bartlett thinks the increased chop is being caused by three facts: 

1. Uptick in AI skepticism, exacerbated by the recent OpenAI discourse around a “federal bail out” of AI infrastructure spend

From Bartlett’s seat, “a more bearish/skeptical view of the AI trade is coming up in more and more of our investor conversations… even if positioning hasn’t changed much off the highs  (ie has been too hard to be short, or even underweight the momentum behind the trade).“

While there have been several drivers of increased skepticism of late (circular nature of Cloud deals, “peak feel” to cadence of news flow, general ROI concerns etc)…

… two recent comments from OpenAI (who has separated itself as the biggest consumer of AI infrastructure) appear to be spooking the market:

• 1) Sam Altman’s defensive response to Brad Gerstner’s question on “How can a company with $13bn in revenues make $1.4 trillion of spend commitments?” on the g2Pod podcast earlier this week (see “OpenAI CFO Seeks US Government Backing, Disappointed Market Doesn’t Have More AI “Exuberance“)
• 2) OpenAI’s CFO Sarah Friar mention of a potential federal government “backstop” for AI financing (WSJ) yesterday. (see “AI is the new global arms race, and capex will eventually be funded by governments (US and China).“)  

 
Today, Trump’s AI czar David Sachs responded to the “federal bailout” comments … with many noting the bizarreness of any talk of a “bail out” given where we are in the AI cycle. 

There will be no federal bailout for AI. The U.S. has at least 5 major frontier model companies. If one fails, others will take its place.

— David Sacks (@DavidSacks) November 6, 2025

2. Negative earnings asymmetry highlighting poor Risk/Reward 

The difficulty of getting paid on Longs into earnings has continued (see: DASH -15%, HUBS -17%, PTC -10% today …. which comes after RBLX -15% , META -12%, NFLX -10%, ANET -9%, PLTR -7%, MSFT bleed over the last week). 
– Goldman thinks the asymmetry around earnings reactions is contributing to an uptick in risk/reward considerations into YE, particularly given where positioning currently stands and how hard & fast certain pockets of the market have ran in recent months.
 
3. Concerns surrounding the Jobs situation 

Noise around the health of the Jobs market in the US has increased in recent sessions, with a Bloomberg story out this morning reporting US companies announced 153k job cuts last month, triple the amount during the same month last year, and the most for any October since 2003. The story, citing data from Challenger, Gray & Christmas, pointed to AI adoption, softening consumer and corporate spending, and rising costs as the primary drivers of belt-tightening and hiring freezes. 

As Bartlett concludes, “how the market responds to the potential job loss side of the AI equation is an outstanding question, with today’s price action potentially suggesting that there is a threshold where “too much job displacement” becomes a problem.“

Which sounds a little like Scenario 3 the options we presented yesterday…

Three endgame scenarios emerging

1. AI is huge “unlit fiber” dud a la Global Crossing, leads to record capital misallocation; Mag 7 crashes, dragging market with it 30-40%, Fed steps in to bailout again

2. AI is long slog, transforms into civilizational competition between US…

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) November 5, 2025

More in the full Goldman note available to pro subs.

Authored by Doug Ross via Director Blue Substack,

How the KGB’s Playbook Is Destroying the West Today

Yuri Aleksandrovich Bezmenov (1939–1993), also known as Tomas David Schuman, was a Soviet journalist and KGB operative specializing in propaganda and ideological subversion.

Ideological subversion is the process of bending a society’s perception of reality so completely that it destroys itself.

In the Cold War era, few voices pierced the veil of secrecy as profoundly as that of Yuri Bezmenov, a KGB defector whose chilling exposés on ideological subversion still resonate today. His warnings, drawn from firsthand experience in Soviet active measures, offer blueprints for destroying free societies—not through bombs, invasions or disease, but through the poisons of manipulated ideas and cultural decay.

Here are 20 of Bezmenov’s key insights.

1. Ideological subversion is a long-term process, spanning 15-60 years, designed to change the perception of reality in a target nation without a need for military force.

2. Only about 15% of KGB efforts focused on traditional espionage; the majority targeted psychological warfare and ideological manipulation.

3. The goal is to demoralize a society by undermining its moral, educational, and cultural foundations, making people unable to recognize or defend against threats.

4. Demoralization takes 15-20 years, the time needed to educate one generation with subversive ideas.

5. Educational systems at all levels are key targets, turning schools into indoctrination centers that promote relativism over facts and critical thinking.

6. Media infiltration sows confusion by amplifying divisive narratives and discrediting objective truth.

7. Religion is attacked by portraying it as outdated or oppressive, eroding spiritual anchors and replacing them with state loyalty or nihilism.

8. Family structures are weakened through promotion of individualism, divorce, and alternative lifestyles that fragment social cohesion.

9. Moral relativism blurs right and wrong, leading to apathy and inability to unite against a society’s true enemies.

10. History is rewritten to vilify national heroes and traditions, fostering self-doubt and guilt in the populace.

11. Following demoralization, destabilization lasts 2-5 years, targeting the economy, foreign relations, and defense to create internal chaos.

12. Economic sabotage widens class divides, shrinks the middle class, and breeds resentment through inflation, shortages, or inequality.

13. Foreign policy is manipulated to isolate the nation, straining alliances and emboldening adversaries.

14. Defense readiness erodes through budget cuts, internal divisions, or anti-military propaganda.

15. The Crisis stage erupts in violence or upheaval, where a demoralized and destabilized society demands radical solutions*.

16. During the crisis, people willingly surrender freedoms for promised security, paving the way for authoritarian control.

17. Normalization is the final phase, where subversive changes become the “new normal,” institutionalized and irreversible.

18. Opposition is silenced through censorship, marginalization, or elimination in the normalization stage.

19. The process relies on “useful idiots”—well-meaning Western intellectuals, elites, activists, and leaders who unwittingly* advance societal suicide.

20. Once subversion succeeds, even exposure of the truth won’t reverse it, as the population rejects facts that contradict their reprogrammed worldview.

Bezmenov’s insights resonate today for obvious reasons from our fractured educational institutions, corrupted sciences to zero trust in “experts”.

Americans must heed Yuri’s prescient warning: reclaim critical thinking, fortify culture, and reject divisive ideologies before the stages of subversion culminate in irreversible “normalization.”

Because at that point America is dead.

Three additional Chinese researchers at the University of Michigan have been charged as part of an ongoing investigation into the smuggling of biological materials from China to the United States, the U.S. Department of Justice announced on Nov. 5.

Bai Xu, 28, Zhang Fengfan, 27, and Zhang Zhiyong, 30, were charged in a criminal complaint filed on Nov. 4 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan.

Bai and Zhang Fengfan were charged with conspiracy to smuggle biological materials into the United States, while Zhang Zhiyong was charged with making false statements to federal agents.

The three defendants were arrested at the John F. Kennedy International Airport on Oct. 16 and taken into custody by Immigration and Customs Enforcement before they could board a flight to China.

Frank Fang reports that The Epoch Times was unable to reach the defendants’ attorneys for comment, but notes that the case is connected to Han Chengxuan, a Chinese scholar at China’s Huazhong University of Science and Technology.

Han was supposed to start research at the University of Michigan in June under a J-1 visa, but was arrested upon her arrival at Detroit Metro Airport that month. She was accused of having shipped, prior to her arrival in the United States, petri dishes containing nematode worms, known as C. elegans, to the university and falsely declaring them on shipping documents.

Han later pleaded no contest to three smuggling charges and to lying to U.S. customs officials and was sentenced to time served in September.

According to the criminal complaint, Han was removed from the United States on Sept. 11.

“Allegedly attempting to smuggle biological materials under the guise of ‘research’ is a serious crime that threatens America’s national and agricultural security,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement on Nov. 5.

“We will remain vigilant to threats like these from foreign nationals who would take advantage of America’s generosity to advance a malicious agenda.”

Shipments

Bai, Zhang Fengfan, and Zhang Zhiyong all came to the United States on J-1 visas as scholars at the University of Michigan, according to the criminal complaint. Bai arrived in the United States in August 2024, and his roommate, Zhang Fengfan, arrived in September 2023. Zhang Zhiyong arrived in September 2021.

On March 5 this year, a UPS shipment from Han, which was addressed to Bai’s apartment in Ann Arbor, Michigan, was intercepted and found by the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) to be “improperly manifested as ‘doc,’” the criminal complaint stated. The shipment included a handwritten note listing 28 DNA molecules, or plasmids, four of which were related to C. elegans.

Prosecutors said the UPS shipment was the source of one of the three smuggling counts to which Han pleaded no contest.

On March 31, CBP officers contacted Bai about the intercepted UPS package, but he was “uncooperative and refused to speak to or meet with the officers,” according to the criminal complaint.

From July 2024 to October 2024, Han also allegedly shipped several packages to Dylan Zhang, whom prosecutors believed to be Zhang Fengfan. According to the criminal complaint, one of the packages, wrongfully manifested as “plastic plates,” included eight petri dishes “containing C. elegans with genetic modifications.”

The shipments sent to Zhang Fengfan from Sept. 23 and Sept. 29 in the same year were the source of two of the three smuggling counts to which Han pleaded no contest, according to prosecutors.

Zhang Zhiyong sent a package to the University of Michigan in 2019 containing nematodes in petri dishes, but manifested as “plastic plates,” according to the criminal complaint.

Han Chengxuan

After Han was removed from the United States, the University of Michigan conducted an internal investigation. According to prosecutors, the three defendants “each refused to participate in the investigation” and were subsequently terminated by the university.

On Oct. 8, the University of Michigan terminated the three defendants’ records on the Department of Homeland Security’s Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS), prosecutors said, explaining that the move meant that they were “no longer in compliance with their J-1 visas.” Afterward, the Department of Homeland Security considered them “eligible for removal,” according to the criminal complaint.

U.S. customs officials interviewed the three defendants at the John F. Kennedy International Airport on Oct. 16, according to the criminal complaint. The trio identified Han as a member of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Prosecutors noted that Han began her doctoral studies at Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST) in 2020, with Liu Jianfen as her adviser.

According to Liu’s personal page on HUST’s website, he currently serves as president of the school’s College of Life Science and Technology and head of its Key Laboratory of Molecular Biophysics of China’s Ministry of Education.

In 2012, Liu was awarded funding as a distinguished scholar by the state-run National Natural Science Foundation of China, according to his personal page.

Zhang Fengfan told U.S. customs officials that he was flying back to China to continue his second-year doctorate program at HUST under Liu, according to prosecutors.

There have been other smuggling cases connected to the University of Michigan in recent months.

Jian Yunqing, a post-doctoral research fellow at the University of Michigan, was charged with conspiring with her boyfriend, Liu Zunyong, to bring a fungus known as Fusarium graminearum into the United States. The fungus can devastate wheat, barley, maize, and rice and cause health problems in humans and livestock.

Jian and Liu were charged in June with visa fraud, conspiracy, making false statements, and smuggling a pathogen into the United States.

Rep. John Moolenaar (R-Mich.), chairman of the House Select Committee on the CCP, called on university leaders to conduct internal reviews to protect their research from “China’s adversarial actions,” according to a Nov. 5 statement.

“These new charges reveal an organized network of scholars engaged in illegal activity on Michigan’s campus. It is part of a broader, coordinated campaign targeting universities across the country, driven by China’s efforts to acquire American technology,” Moolenaar said.

Authored by Jeffrey A. Tucker via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

In 1935, the mainline publisher Macmillan printed a book called “Planned Society” edited by American economist and journalist George Soule. The core idea was that mass unemployment, the economic depression, financial instability, and material deprivation all have a solution. We need the best and the brightest to come to power with a new plan for the whole of society.

What followed were many chapters exploring the idea. With the right plan, government can produce and deliver food. It can build all the houses and apartments. It can be the main influence in capital markets and hence fix business cycles. It can set prices and guarantee they are the right ones. It can provide minimum living standards for everyone, plus provide education and health care.

The ethos of the book was not about replicating the Soviet experience, which was already discredited by that time. Sloganeering about revolutionary workers and expropriating the expropriators was not in fashion. Indeed, powerful intellectuals and industries truly feared such attitudes. The planned society of the sort mapped out in this book was to be the alternative.

The underlying presumption of the book—one shared by nearly all public intellectuals at the time—was that both freedom and democracy have failed. They have led to the chaos of economic collapse and social division. These old-fashioned ideas—rooted in simply allowing society to evolve on its own—were deeply unscientific. They needed to be replaced by new ideas from the Ivy League.

The moniker “planned society” also served as a replacement for socialism as a political agenda. Why did socialism have to be replaced? First, it was a political loser thanks to the disasters unfolding in the Soviet Union. Second, all classes of people in the U.S. and the UK like their property rights, religion, and families, and had no interest in a scheme to jettison them. Third, no one at that point in time had a solution to the fundamental economic failing of socialism.

To understand that latter point, let’s go back more than a decade earlier to 1920. Economist Ludwig von Mises had written an article called “Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth.” He offered a novel counterpoint to socialist theory. It had normally been assumed that socialism failed because people are not angels and therefore cannot be expected to work for the good of all.

Mises said something different. He was glad to imagine a world of people who are community-minded, unselfish, and need no monetary incentives to work and do a good job. They are happy to produce, share, and commit themselves to the well-being of all. Let’s say that all men are angels. Even then, he said, socialism will necessarily fail for a precise technological reason.

Socialism imagines getting rid of the private ownership of capital, which are the produced means of production. We are talking about steel, wood, all tools, trucks, and anything else that is neither natural resources nor consumer good. Those would all be owned collectively. In this way, socialism said, it could stop value from unfairly flowing from workers to owners. This addresses the core argument of Karl Marx in his book “Capital” and a constant complaint of socialists from time immemorial.

With collective ownership of capital goods, the market for them would disappear. Along with that there would be no trading of capital and no prices for them. Without such prices, accounting for profits and losses from capital would also vanish. We are left with just huge piles of stuff that have to be allocated through some means other than normal accounting. That means that the planners would have to be in charge.

What signals would the planners have? Prices have been taken away. They would have no access to information systems about the needs of society. They would not know whether scarce amounts of steel should flow to trains, trucks, bridges, buildings, repairs of old things, or building of the new. They would not know whether cotton and wool need to go to blankets, clothing, beddings, or uniforms. They would have no idea what the trade-offs were of these decisions and no means by which to assess whether they had made the right decision.

And then you have the problem of change. In the real world, everything is always changing: consumer tastes, technology, seasonal needs, demographics, and talents. A socialist society managed by elites would lack any signaling system to adapt to such changes. Society would get stuck in place and economic life would stagnate. This is the best possible outcome. The worst outcome is sheer chaos.

“Without economic calculation there can be no economy,” Mises wrote. “Hence, in a socialist state wherein the pursuit of economic calculation is impossible, there can be—in our sense of the term—no economy whatsoever.”

What would replace the economy?

“There will be hundreds and thousands of factories in operation. Very few of these will be producing wares ready for use; in the majority of cases what will be manufactured will be unfinished goods and production goods. All these concerns will be interrelated. Every good will go through a whole series of stages before it is ready for use. In the ceaseless toil and moil of this process, however, the administration will be without any means of testing their bearings. It will never be able to determine whether a given good has not been kept for a superfluous length of time in the necessary processes of production, or whether work and material have not been wasted in its completion.”

Finally: “Thus in the socialist commonwealth every economic change becomes an undertaking whose success can be neither appraised in advance nor later retrospectively determined. There is only groping in the dark. Socialism is the abolition of rational economy.”

The argument was devastating to European intellectuals. Mises’s point was born out in Soviet experience. No one could really come up with an answer to it until the Polish economist Oskar Lange in the mid-1930s took it on. He said that the planners would not need real markets insofar as they could simulate markets with auctions. The state could hire financial traders to bid and ask, thus yielding prices that the planners could take in as information to feed their plans.

That argument was further met by F.A. Hayek who broadened Mises’s point into a general theory of knowledge in society. All social systems need information for coordination and planning but from where is that information drawn? He said that the only reliable information is connected to time, place, and real human experience. Even then, all economic decision-making is a speculation about human needs and future uncertainties. The data we need is necessary to localize and disperse, and even and often embed tacitly in habits, mores, and traditions.

The planners, he said, will always be ignorant relative to the intelligence of the societies over which they preside.

By the 1950s, the planners developed a new scheme that seemed to refute all the past critics of socialism and offer a new way toward organizing a rational society. They claimed that the advent of the computer age had made socialist planning entirely possible. “Let us put the simultaneous equations on an electronic computer and we shall obtain the solution in less than a second,” wrote Lange. “The market process with its cumbersome atonements appears old-fashioned. Indeed, it may be considered as a computing device of the pre-electronic age.”

Of course that scheme did not work. The knowledge problem, clarified Hayek, was not merely a technical issue that can be solved with more computing power. It was a learning and discovery problem that requires freedom of action, choice, and trading to generate useful information that adapts to change.

You see where this is going now. Myriad thinkers have once again rallied around a technological solution to the socialist problem of rational economic calculation and wise use of resources.

Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba, has written: “In the era of big data, the abilities of human beings in obtaining and processing data are greater than you can imagine. With the help of artificial intelligence or multiple intelligence, our perception of the world will be elevated to a new level. As such, big data will make the market smarter and make it possible to plan and predict market forces so as to allow us to finally achieve a planned economy.”

This is the same hubris that led Vladimir Lenin to believe that solving the economic problem under communism was easy as pie, until he discovered two years after taking power that even the pies disappeared.

It will be the same with the people who think AI will make the dream come true. You already know this. Even the best data is past data. It does not provide a crystal ball to the future. It is also deeply mistake prone. As with all planned systems, it provides no mechanisms for adaptation to reality even when that reality is screaming for change.

Isn’t it remarkable? For some reason, intellectuals are forever reluctant to admit that they are in no position to plan society under any ideological flag, and that freedom alone is capable of generating the best possible social and economic outcomes. The old solutions of individual rights and freedom—the rallying points of America’s Founding Fathers—have not only stood the test of time but still offer the best model for the future.

Australia ranks 54th by population, 14th by gross domestic product…and sixth by size?

The infographic below, via Visual Capitalist’s Pallavi Rao, puts its staggering scale in context by showing how many familiar nations could sit comfortably inside its outline.

The data for this visualization comes from UN Statistics Division, using total area estimates.

Australia’s True Size Revealed

Covering nearly 3.0 million square miles (7.73 million km²), Australia is the sixth-largest country, sitting just behind Brazil.

Note: Population data sourced from the International Monetary Fund.

Its landmass is roughly equivalent to the combined size of nine other countries, including 7th-ranked India.

For an American perspective, it’s the size of the contiguous U.S. west of the Mississippi River.

Humans often underestimate continental scale when viewing Mercator maps, so stacking countries gives a more intuitive sense of magnitude.

ℹ️ Related: For more on the Mercator projection, check out: The Problem With Our Maps.

Yet with only 27 million residents, Australia’s average population density is nine people per square mile.

The average population density of the combined nine countries is 687 people per square mile.

Why So Much of Australia Is Empty

The emptiness stems largely from the notorious Outback.

Roughly two-fifths of the continent is classified as arid or semi-arid desert, encompassing the Simpson, Tanami, and Great Victoria deserts.

Summer highs above 110°F (43°C) and some of the lowest rainfall on Earth make permanent settlement costly and risky.

Consequently, more than 85% of Australians cluster in coastal metro areas such as Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, and Brisbane.

If you enjoyed today’s post, check out Visualizing Africa’s True Size on Voronoi, the new app from Visual Capitalist.

Authored by Cara Michelle Miller via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Melatonin, a natural hormone, is often labeled a heart-healthy sleep aid. However, an extensive new study suggests that regular users face a higher risk of developing heart failure, hospitalization, and even death over time.

Adults with chronic insomnia who used melatonin for a year or longer faced a 90 percent higher risk of developing heart failure within five years compared to non-users.

The preliminary analysis, presented Monday at the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions 2025, tracked more than 130,000 adults diagnosed with insomnia. Among those who took melatonin for more than a year, 4.6 percent developed heart failure, compared with 2.7 percent of nonusers.

Melatonin users were also more than three times as likely to be hospitalized for heart failure and had almost double the risk of dying from any cause. Still, the two groups differed only modestly in absolute terms—7.8 percent of long-term melatonin users died during the study period versus 4.3 percent in those not taking melatonin—a gap of about 3.5 percentage points.

“The takeaway isn’t that melatonin is ‘bad’ or that everyone should stop taking it,” Dr. Ekenedilichukwu Nnadi, chief resident in internal medicine at SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University, who led the research, told The Epoch Times in an email. “It’s that we shouldn’t assume something is risk-free just because it’s natural or sold over the counter.”

Melatonin, a hormone the body naturally produces at night, is often regarded as a safe, easy fix for insomnia and is frequently taken nightly by people struggling to sleep. Its use has more than doubled over the past decade, with about 12 percent of Americans diagnosed with chronic insomnia and millions more struggling to sleep most nights.

What the Study Found

Researchers used data from more than 130,000 adults diagnosed with insomnia. Roughly half had been prescribed melatonin or reported self-use; the rest had no melatonin use. None had heart failure or used prescription sleep aids at the start of the study.

The results held even when researchers required multiple prescriptions to define “chronic use,” reinforcing a link to long-term, versus occasional, melatonin use.

“This doesn’t prove that melatonin directly causes heart failure,” said Nnadi, noting that the study was observational. People who take melatonin every night may simply have more severe insomnia, which itself could raise heart risks.

Still, the study’s size and careful matching make the findings notable—and raise important questions about supplement safety, he said.

“It shows that people with chronic insomnia who took melatonin long-term were more likely to experience these outcomes. It’s an unexpected and important signal that needs to be studied further.”

What the Study Can’t Tell Us

The research could only track prescribed melatonin, since some over-the-counter use isn’t recorded in medical records. That means some people counted as “nonusers” may have taken melatonin without telling their doctors.

“That would actually bias the results toward no difference. In other words, it would make melatonin look safer than it might be,” said Nnadi. “So the fact that we still saw a strong, consistent association suggests the signal is real.”

“Of course, this limitation is exactly why we need randomized, prospective trials to confirm whether melatonin itself is contributing to these risks.”

Unlike prescription drugs, melatonin supplements are not strictly regulated.

The actual amount of melatonin can vary widely from one brand to another. A study found that the amount of melatonin you get can vary significantly from what’s on the label—ranging from -83 percent to +478 percent—suggesting that some products may supply far higher levels than the body is designed to handle.

Most people in the United States buy melatonin over the counter, without any prescription, and may take it for months or years. In the UK, Australia, and the European Union, melatonin is available only by prescription for short-term treatment of insomnia.

Mixed Evidence on Heart Effects

Melatonin also acts as an antioxidant and has been associated with improved heart benefits for people with existing heart issues—improving heart function and reducing stress on the heart muscles. However, these studies were small, short-term trials on animals or carefully selected patients using pure, prescription-strength melatonin.

“Our study is different,” said Nnadi. “We looked at real-world use: supplements taken nightly for years, in diverse populations with varying doses and product quality in patients that specifically have chronic insomnia. That’s a very different scenario.”

Melatonin helps regulate the body’s sleep-wake cycle, peaking at night to signal the brain that it’s time to rest. For people with insomnia, taking melatonin before bed can help promote sleepiness and support a more restful night. It can also modestly influence blood pressure and heart rate as the body transitions to rest.

Although the study didn’t identify a mechanism, possible effects could involve heart rhythm, blood pressure, or metabolism—effects that are not fully understood—especially with supplements taken over many months or years.

Insomnia itself, meanwhile, has been linked in previous research to increased inflammation, higher nighttime blood pressure, and changes in stress hormones such as cortisol—all of which can strain the heart over time and raise the risk of heart failure.

Expert Recommendations

Marie-Pierre St-Onge, a sleep researcher at Columbia University who was not involved in the study, said in her preliminary analysis that she was surprised that some patients were prescribed melatonin for more than a year.

“Melatonin, at least in the U.S., is not indicated for the treatment of insomnia,” said St-Onge, who chairs the writing group for the American Heart Association’s 2025 scientific statement, Multidimensional Sleep Health: Definitions and Implications for Cardiometabolic Health, adding that “people should be aware that it should not be taken chronically without a proper indication.”

The Council for Responsible Nutrition, a trade group for supplement manufacturers, agreed that melatonin should be used occasionally and that anyone with long-term sleep difficulties should consult a medical professional before using it.

What Should You Do?

For those struggling with consistent sleep, Dr. Muhammad A. Rishi, a sleep medicine physician at Indiana University Health, previously wrote to The Epoch Times via email that melatonin supplements should be used carefully.

Even though melatonin is a naturally occurring hormone, Rishi said that the supplements change a person’s mental or physical state, and therefore, should be treated as a drug.

Common side effects include headaches and dizziness; it can also interact with other medicines, such as anticoagulants—drugs that help prevent blood clots. Sleep doctors typically advise starting with the lowest effective dose—about 0.5 to 1 milligram—taken one to two hours before bedtime, and only for one to three months. Long-term effects remain unknown.

Persistent insomnia can signal an underlying condition, such as sleep apnea, restless legs syndrome, depression, or chronic pain. When a sleep specialist identifies the correct diagnosis, treatment options can then be explored.

“For people using melatonin occasionally or short-term, it may still be fine. But for those taking it nightly for years, especially with heart disease or risk factors, it’s worth having a conversation with your doctor,“ Nnadi said. ”We need to treat supplements with the same care and skepticism as prescription drugs.”

“Our study,” he added, “is a reminder that more isn’t always better, and that we need stronger evidence before calling any supplement ‘heart-healthy.’”

The cost of housing continues to strain American renters, especially in states with rapid population growth and limited housing supply.

This chart, via Visual Capitalist’s Niccolo Conte, ranks U.S. states by the share of renter households spending more than half of their income on rent—commonly known as being “severely rent-burdened.”

The data comes from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS) 2024 1-Year Estimates.

America’s Highest Rent Burdens

Across the country, roughly one in four renter households is severely burdened by rent. But in some states, that share climbs much higher.

Florida leads with 30.1% of renters spending more than half their income on housing. Rents in Florida increased by nearly 40% between 2019 and 2023 due to high population growth and limited rental supply.

Other high-burden states include Nevada (28.0%) and California (27.5%) in the West. Overall, coastal states are prevalent in the top 10, including New York, Oregon, and Hawaii.

Where Rent Pressure Is Lowest

At the other end of the list, rental housing remains relatively affordable in parts of the Midwest and Great Plains.

States such as South Dakota (15.3%), North Dakota (15.7%), and Wyoming (17.0%) report the lowest shares of rent-burdened households. These states also see relatively slower growth in population and demand for rental housing.

America’s Rent Problem

According to a survey of over 31 million households, housing is the single largest expense for renters in the United States.

Households that spend over 30% of their household income on housing costs are considered “cost-burdened”, and nearly half of all renter households in the U.S. fall in this category. Those who spend over 50% of their income on rent and housing costs are considered severely rent-burdened, and almost one in five U.S. households are in this bracket.

Rental unaffordability remains an important challenge for millions of U.S. households, especially as inflation and housing prices outpace wage growth across the country.

If you enjoyed today’s post, check out The Top 20 Cities With Sky-High Rent in 2025 on the Voronoi app.

Authored by Lawrence Wilson via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Democrats won decisive victories in the 2025 elections, including a mayoral win in New York City and governorships in New Jersey and Virginia. Democrats also did well in races at the state and local levels.

Despite the victory, their path forward remains no clearer than before, according to some political analysts. That’s because the top Democratic winners presented vastly different governing strategies to voters.

Zohran Mamdani, a political newcomer who describes himself as a democratic socialist, defeated traditional Democrat and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in New York.

Centrist Democrats Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill won gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey, respectively, claiming even wider margins at the polls.

According to Michael Genovese, president of the Global Policy Institute at Loyola Marymount University, whether Democrats will now embrace a leader who can mobilize the far edge of their party, or seek to solidify the middle while distancing themselves from far-left economic and social engineering, depends on this:

“Who captured the zeitgeist of the times?”

Here are three choices Democrats will face at a national level to solidify the gains of 2025.

How to Deliver Affordability

Economic issues were the focus of the major races, and Democrats won by promising change.

“The Democratic Party is a party of affordability,” Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin said in a Nov. 5 press call. “Our candidates connected with voters at their core by running on what they truly care about: their families, their livelihoods, and the American dream.”

That worked well in 2025, with many Americans still dealing with high prices, and all elections were local.

The question now is how Democrats will deliver lower prices, more jobs, and lower housing costs at a national level.

In New York, Mamdani’s affordability plan rests on bigger government and higher taxes. He promised free bus service, free child care, and a rent freeze for nearly half of the city’s apartments to be paid for by an increase in corporate taxes and a 2 percent income tax on wealthy New Yorkers.

In Virginia, Gov.-elect Spanberger’s affordability plan strongly resembled that of President Donald Trump at some points.

She promised to reduce health care costs by cracking down on pharmacy benefit managers, reducing drug prices by negotiating prices with pharmaceutical companies, and lowering energy costs by declaring a state of emergency and increasing production—ideas Trump already implemented at the national level.

Genovese wondered which approach Democrats will land on nationally.

“Are Democrats … strongest when they go left, toward Mamdani, or are they best served by offering moderate, mainstream candidates, such as Spanberger and Sherrill?” he said.

Where to Stand on Gender, Israel

Apart from economics, the party must define a consistent position on issues that have been driven mostly by the party’s left wing, according to Richard Himelfarb, a professor of political science at Hofstra University.

One such issue is gender ideology.

Democrats have advocated for transgender rights and civil liberties, and the California Assembly rejected bills that would have banned transgender-identifying males from competing against women in school sports.

However, not all Democrats have drawn a hard line on this issue.

“Abigail Spanberger really dodged questions about what to do about biological men in women’s sports,” Himelfarb told The Epoch Times.

That worked in a state like Virginia, he said, but said, “I don’t know that the Democratic candidate for the presidency in 2028 is going to be able to dodge that question.”

California Gov. Gavin Newsom also said on his own podcast in March that it is “deeply unfair” for transgender athletes to compete in women’s and girls’ sports.

Another issue that may call for a national position is support for Israel, according to Himelfarb.

The Democratic platform for 2024 states that “the United States strongly supports Israel in the fight against Hamas.” The platform also calls for a two-state solution, providing a home for the Palestinian people.

Yet, Himmelfarb said, “Opposition to Israel has been, in many ways, normalized in the Democratic party, and I think that you are going to see more of that going forward.”

As a case study in both issues, Himelfarb cites Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.), who questioned the inclusion of transgender athletes in female sports following the last election and was soundly criticized by fellow Democrats.

Moulton is challenging Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) in the 2026 primary and has refused to accept contributions from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a pro-Israel lobbying group.

“So he’s basically saying, I’m not unequivocally supportive of the State of Israel. He’s tried to move to the left of Markey,” Himelfarb said.

It appears that voters on the left and center will demand clear positions on these issues in the next election.

What You Stand For

Democrats campaigned heavily against Trump in the 2025 election, as they have in most elections since 2016. The party’s 2024 platform mentions Trump 150 times in 92 pages but refers to the future just 31 times.

The party’s strategy now is to continue winning by focusing on household economics, which leaders believe they can own.

“We gave voters something to be for and not just against,” Martin said.

The approval rating of the sitting president is the most important factor in off-year elections, according to Henry Olsen, senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Trump’s approval rating has been below 50 percent for weeks.

“The Democrats should have had a good night. It was theirs to lose,” James Lee, president of Susquehanna Polling and Research, said, referring to the Nov. 4 results.

Economic issues may not be as potent an issue for Democrats as they believe, according to Aaron Dusso, chairman of the Department of Political Science at Indiana University–Indianapolis.

Polling consistently indicates that voters trust Republicans to handle the economy more than they trust Democrats, Dusso said. There’s no guarantee that economic conditions won’t improve over the next 12 months.

Democrats must present a positive vision for issues that they can own, Dusso said.

“You’ve got to get [voters] thinking about other things, the issues that are primary for you.” For Democrats, that’s health care, social policy, and social issues, he said.

To win the next election, Dusso said, Democrats must do more than say, “We’re just like Republicans, just a little bit nicer. You’ve got to stand for something.”

The Epoch Times requested comments from the Democratic National Committee and did not receive a response by the time of publication.